You Have Not Yet Been Defeated roundtable
Yesterday, CCPT hosted the You Have Not Yet Been Defeated roundtable conversation with Sanaa Seif and Nicola Pratt.
The discussion focused on Alaa Abd El-Fattah's book of essays You Have Not Yet Been Defeated and some of his key ideas contained therein, including his urgent messages about the challenges of democracy-building, resistance and solidarity in a repressive, dictatorial regime.
Alaa Abd El-Fattah is a prominent British-Egyptian activist and one of the leading voices of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. During the 2011 revolution, Alaa criticised the army’s abuses against the protesters and was imprisoned for “inciting violence against the army”. Since then, he has spent most of his time in prison, arrested for alleged violations of national security. He went on hunger strike from April 2022 to November 2022, during COP 27 in protest against the conditions of his imprisonment.
Alaa’s prison sentence ended on 29th September this year, but the regime refused to release him and so he remains illegally imprisoned. Laila Soueif, Alaa‘s mom, has been on hunger strike since the 30th of September over the continued imprisonment of her son.
His book You Have Not Yet Been Defeated is a collection of his writings, from essays to tweets to short notes and reflections smuggled out of prison, translated and edited by an anonymous collective of supporters. They cover the time of the 2011 Revolution and its aftermath. Anyone reading the book will immediately notice Alaa is an incredibly creative, innovative and versatile thinker. In his essays, he adopts a plurality of genres, metaphors and mediums to convey his urgent messages about the challenges of democracy-building, resistance and solidarity in a repressive, dictatorial regime.
Just a couple of weeks back, Alaa has been named this year’s PEN writer of courage. Arundhati Roy decided to share her prize with him “for the same reason that Egyptian authorities have chosen to keep him in prison for two more years instead of releasing him last month. Because his voice is as beautiful as it is dangerous. Because his understanding of what we are facing today is as sharp as a dagger’s edge.”
The roundtable conversation focused on Alaa's use of the metaphor of the monstrous to illustrate the condition of living and resisting in the wake of defeat. He writes we must embrace and recognise “the beauty in monstrosity”, “for only the monstrous can hold both the history of dreams and hopes, and the reality of defeat and pain together”. We discussed how these ideas speak to the Egyptian activists’ attempts to continue resisting in the wake of defeat and collectively grapple with the failure of the revolution.
We also examined the powerful appeal to solidarity that Alaa articulates in his You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, the essay that forms the book’s title. There Alaa says I have been defeated, but you—addressing people around the world, but perhaps specifically the citizens of liberal democracies—you have not yet been defeated. We talked about the significance of this invitation, this challenge for those who are still free to act, to resist injustice and oppression, to contest the status quo.
Last but not least, we showed a powerful clip from the campaign for Alaa’s release, where Alaa's mom, Laila Soueif announces her decision to go on hunger strike to contest the unjust and illegal imprisonment of her son. You can take a look at the clip here.
Many thanks again to Sanaa and Nicola for joining us for this conversation. It is our hope the roundtable raised awareness about the significance of Alaa’s writing, and his activism more generally, and helped support the campaign for his release.
A note on our distinguished speakers:
Sanaa Seif is Alaa’s sister, herself a prominent activist, writer and filmmaker involved in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. She was an editor and shooter on the film The Square, which details the events of the Egyptian revolution from 2011 to 2013 and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary feature. Since her involvement in the Revolution, Sanaa has been very active in several protest movements and human rights campaigns, including the campaign for Alaa’s release. She was also arrested and imprisoned twice for her activism. Many see her as a symbol of resistance and the revolutionary spirit.
Nicola Pratt is a Professor of International Politics of the Middle East. She has written extensively on women's activism, democratization, human rights and conflict in a number of Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt. Between 2016 and 2020, she led a research project on 'Politics and Popular Culture in Egypt: Contested Narratives of the 25 January 2011 Uprising and its Aftermath, resulting in the curation of a digital archive of the 2011 Revolution.